Tag Archives: argentiana

California and 23 States Reach $22.5 Million Settlement Against Pharmaceutical Companies that Blocked Generic Drugs

January 13, 2010 jd

I always wonder when I travel to another country why proscription drugs are so much cheaper than here in the States. Here’s one of many reasons drug companies get by charging so much. They spend their money cooking ways to stifle competition, along with full page ads in magazines and TV ads. Here’s the settlement details by the California State Attorney’s General office for blocking of generic drugs.

“Oakland-Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. and 23 other state attorneys general today announced a $22.5 million settlement with pharmaceutical giants Abbott and Fournier after the companies “illegally blocked” cheaper generic substitutes for the cholesterol-reducing drug Tricor.

The settlement is the result of one of the country’s first legal actions challenging pharmaceutical companies for “product hopping,” a strategy to block generic competition by making slight changes to the formulation of a drug.

“Abbott and Fournier devised a complex scheme that illegally blocked cheaper generic drugs from entering the market,” Brown said. “They used minor reformulations of the drug to delay competition and filed frivolous patent lawsuits. This scheme cost California and other states millions of dollars.”

Beginning in 1998, Abbott and Fournier, two of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies, partnered to manufacture and distribute Tricor, a cholesterol-reducing drug. Tricor’s annual sales were in excess of $750 million.

By 2002, as Tricor’s patents were set to expire, several drug companies sought approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market a generic drug equivalent to Tricor. To be approved by the FDA, the generic-drug manufacturer must prove that its drug has the same active ingredients and the same labeling as the brand-name drug, in addition to being a therapeutic equivalent of the brand-name product.

Once a generic drug is approved for market, the market share for a brand-name drug like Tricor can decrease by up to 80 percent. Most states and group health plans require pharmacists to substitute the generic drug for a brand-name drug to get the cost benefit of the cheaper generic version.

Knowing generic manufacturers were attempting to enter the market, the lawsuit alleged that Abbott and Fournier devised a complex scheme to delay and prevent the approval and marketing of generic versions of Tricor. The companies made minor changes in the form and dosage strength of Tricor that did not provide any significant health benefits over previous Tricor formulations. These minor changes interfered with and delayed any FDA approval of the generics.

To further delay the process, Abbott and Fournier also filed more than a dozen lawsuits against generic drug manufacturers Teva Pharmaceuticals and Impax Laboratories because the law prohibits the FDA from approving a generic drug for 30 months after patent-infringement lawsuits have been filed. After the 30-month automatic stays expired, all of the suits were eventually dismissed.

As a result of the scheme, Abbott and Fournier recorded Tricor sales exceeding $1 billion at the expense of consumers and state governments.

Today’s settlement agreement requires the companies to cease illegal efforts to block generic competition to Tricor and to pay the states approximately $22.5 million dollars. In California, the Department of General Services, Medi-Cal and the Department of Corrections will be reimbursed for overcharges.

States joining California in today’s lawsuit include: Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia.”

Source Office of Attorney General

Travel

Buenos Aires, March, Friday the Thirteen

March 16, 2009 jd

The smaller building on the right is the Metropolitan Cathedral accross the street from The Plaza de Mayo

I decided to go to the Museo de la Polica Federal on Friday the 13^th . My trustee handbook of Buenos Aires (three years old) said that the museum was open Tuesday through Friday. Therefore, of course, it was closed. Do not carry a three year old guide book with you, spend the money and buy an up to date tour book when you travel. I already found a couple of night clubs that were permanently closed that were mentioned in the book as a good place to go.Anyhow, the museum focuses on uniforms, badges and weapons over the ages. According to the guide book, it also has a truly gruesome room dedicated to forensic medicine, which includes dismembered bodies and other unpleasant sights. Not mentioned in the museum is the sadistic role the Federal Police had in the Dirty Wars of the 1970’s. Maybe it’s just as well that the museum was closed. The museum is located at San Martin 353 if you are in Buenos Aires and care to visit it.San Martin Street is near the Plaza de Mayo.

The Plaza is the exact location that the Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo marched for many years, during and after the dirty wars of the 1970’s. The mothers were women who had had their children kidnapped by the military to be tortured, murdered and never heard from again. The women marched to bring public awareness of what atrocities the military government was committing during the 1970’s Dirty War. This was a period when the military overthrew the government and took control of Argentina. They were responsible for up to 30,000 people disappearing. The mothers’ bravery finally put enough pressure on the military government to restore the country back to an elected civilian government.So leaving the closed Mueso de lan Polica, I walked over to the nearby Plaza de Mayo. Across one of the streets of the Plaza de Mayo is the Metropolitan Cathedral. The present building’s construction started in 1752 and built under the direction of Antonio Masella. The design is that of a Latin cross basilica. It was finished in 1822 (And you say your contractor is slow?) In 1827 a portico was built in a French neoclassical style. This is a wonderful building which is really a piece of art, I highly recommend a visit to the Cathedral if you are in Buenos Aires.

Inside the Cathedral. Notice the huge columns.

Leaving the Cathedral I walked over to the nearby National Historical Museum. The location that houses this museum was originally built in a location chosen by Juan de Garay when founding the city in 1580. It was remodeled in 1621, however in 1632 it was abandoned due to the threat of collapse.In 1731 the building was totally reconstructed and remains now almost as it was originally designed. The museum is a curious mixture of different things, as are many of the Buenos Aires museums are that I’ve gone to. There is an exhibit of lighting throughout the ages, such as candles, candle molds all the way to the present day florescent energy saver lights. Then there are portraits of famous Argentineans, pictures of jail scenes, a reconstruction of an old jail cell (The original structure had a small jail) and stocks. What I mean by stocks are those wooden blocks of wood with hinges and holes in them so you could stick a person’s head or legs through them as punishment. (I’m sure some of the people who had their money stolen by Bernard Madoff would like to see stocks make a comeback)

Real Estate

Octo- Mom Gets New House and Other Revelant Real Estate News

March 11, 2009 jd

Large building in back is Puget Automaker's Office Building in Buenos Aires (Possibe quarters for Octo-Mom?)

Nadya Suleman’s the gal that just had eight more children, along with the six she already had, is going to have to move. Seems like the house she is living in is owned by her mom, which is being foreclosed on. The news is that the family is about $20.000 behind in their mortgage payments.

So what is she to do, well, don’t worry, her father is buying her a bigger and better house. Seems like Nadya’s father is buying her a home in La Habra, south of Los Angeles for $564,000, that’s right over half of a million dollars. The home is around 2,500 square feet and features four bedrooms, three baths and a large fenced in backyard. Well one house foreclosed, another taken off the market, have to look at the bright side of things.

Let’s see, if Nadya sleeps on the couch, and you take 14 kids and divide it by four bedrooms, that’s 3.5 kids per bedroom. If she has two more, then it would be a better fit, 4 kids per bedroom. (Don’t tell her that)

Nadya gave birth to eight children in January when she already had six.

I’m not going to go into the fact that some homeowners are thinking of letting their house foreclose or just walk away because their house is worth less than their mortgage. I hear this more and more recently. So what are you going to do if you let your house foreclose? You can’t buy another house for five years, and if history is any clue, the value of the house you left behind will be more then the mortgage you walked away from. Well, I guess I did rant a little?

Real Estate, Travel

Jon Stewart Blasts CNBC

March 9, 2009 jd 1 Comment

: Another picture of a professional dog walker. Possible new occupation for some of the people on CNBC (I’m still in Buenos Aires and I love dogs)

I love comedy. Comedy takes a complex situation and makes it so easy to understand. This was so much so with the Comedy Central’s skid by Jon Stewart taking on the high and mighty prognosticators of stock market trends on CNBC. Those advisors on CNBC are always full of advice of which stocks to buy, interviewing CEO’s of large companies and glowing about their potential outcome. Jon Stewart shows several of these interviews by them. He then shows the outcome shortly afterwards where for all of their wisdom the companies fail. I love the interview shown of Sir Allen Stanford, a billionaire at the time of the interview on CNBC. Shortly after the interview, the FBI stated that they think Sir Stanford is running a Ponzi scheme.

But the most telling part of the program was when they showed Rick Santelli ranting and raving at the Obama Administration for giving a small portion of the bailout money to homeowners facing foreclosure. Wow, what a rant. (By the way, Santelli was supposed to appear on the show, but didn’t show) But Jon Stewart puts it all in perspective when he proceeded to show that these icons of prognosticators had no problem with the present and past Administrations giving billions of bailout funds to banks, General Motors, Chrysler, AGI and other large companies.

You know it’s easy to place the blame on people facing foreclosure because they should have known what they were getting into when they took out a loan to buy a house. But who set the standards for these loans? It wasn’t the Realtors or the mortgage brokers or the homeowners. Yep, it was the banks setting the lending standards, enticing people into buying a home with low interest rates. Once people bought a home, the loan was set to trigger into a higher interest rate. Don’t you think the banks knew some people could not afford the mortgage? In the old days they called that bait and switch. Now who is getting the majority of the bailout funds, hummm, of course, the banks.

I don’t know what CNBC’s qualifications are to hire Rick Stanletlli or any of the other interviewers. Is it that they are highly educated to help people lose their money, or are they poorly trained psychics? So Rick and his cohorts are hired by CNBC to advise people of the best stocks to buy, and they are almost always 100 percent wrong, so why are they picking on people who are losing their homes? Is it because the homeowners are not as educated in financial matters as they are and should have never bought a home? (Or their stock recommendations)

Like Jon Stewart said, “If I had listened to them, I would be a millionaire, that is, if I had started out with $100 million.” Their coding is screwed up so here’s the best i could do here’s the link to the video.

Real Estate, Travel

Trip to a Museum & Bits & Pieces in Buenos Aires

March 7, 2009 jd

Friday I went to the Museo Nacional De Arte Decorativo or National Museum of Decorative Art. First an update of what’s happening here. The peso was propped up Thursday by the Central Bank and state run banks as they heavily intervened in the market to stop the peso from further weakening. The US gained two cents on the peso Friday, its highest value since 2002. When the banks offered $100 million dollars of its reserves, the peso settled at 3.622 pesos to one dollar. It’s the pesos lowest level since November of last year.

If you think that your credit card interest rate is high, how about the interest rate for commercial construction in Argentina? Argentine President Christina Ferandez complained about “the usurious interest rates” banks are charging private companies for infrastructure works. “Local banks have offered rates of up to 40 or 41 percent” she blasted. Of course Argentina is presently having a 20 percent inflation rate and real estate in Argentina is bought for cash, no low down payment and 30 year mortgage.

Back to the museum, the original structure was built by Mr. Matias Erazyriz and his wife Mrs. Josefina De Alvear. They resided in this huge palace with their two children. The palace was the hub of many major social events until Mrs. Alvear passed away in 1935. The remaining family sold the palace along with the art collection to the Argentine Government shortly thereafter.

The museum is huge, with four floors and a basement that was used for servants, boilers and garage. The museum holds over 4,000 exhibits, some dating back to the 15^th century. It is well worth going to this museum if you happen to be in Buenos Aires. Just the workmanship of the building itself is worth the trip. The museum is located at Av. Del Libertador 1902 in Buenos Aires. Their website is Nacional De Arte Decorativo

So I called the bank again, after paying to rent a computer to get all the information the previous agent wanted. I gave a new agent my card number, social security number and said, now do you want my mother’s name, my address and she cut me off and said “Oh, no you’ve given me enough information.” (Grrr!) She got off the phone for a few minutes, came back and said they were upgrading my card, which was the problem, they were taking care of the problem now and I should be able to use my card in a few hours. So today, I was able to use my card, its fun dealing with a bank, NOT!

Professional Dog Walkers, There are many of Them in Buenos Aires

Prior to traveling abroad, I advised my bank that I was traveling to Buenos Aires. What a surprise when I went to draw out some money and my card was rejected! Calling the international toll free number listed on the back of my card, (which does not work here in Buenos Aires), I was asked for my card number, my social security number, my address, my mother’s name, and then what was the last deposit or what was the last expenditure or my account number. After 10 minutes, having none of that information, I gave up, went on line and got all the information that the agent for the bank requested.

Travel

In Buenos Aires

March 3, 2009 jd 1 Comment

Containing on from my last post, I boarded an American Airline 777 for a nine hour and forty four minute flight to Buenos Aires. I asked my agent who booked my flight to get me a seat next to the emergency exit as you have more room to stretch your legs. Instead, she booked me a seat ahead of the exit and in the middle row!

Now you may not know this, but when manufactures’ design airplanes, they spend thousands of hours designing the seats, using live people for testing, computers and engineers with PHD’s. When they find just the right amount of leg room so that people can barely get into their seats and when they find just the right angle for the seat to tilt back so there is no way you can fall asleep, they go, that’s it, put it into production!

I arrived in Buenos Aires at 9:30 in the morning. My friends were to pick me up and of course they went to the terminal for American Airlines. This being Argentina, our plane landed in the terminal for the Argentina airlines NOT American Airlines. After much searching for me and an hour later, they did finally find me.

Now you may not know that for the last three times I was in Buenos Aires, in addition to vacationing, I was also trying to get my DNI, fighting an endless amount of red tape. DNI stands for Documento Nacional De Identidad or National Identification Number. (Think of something similar to a social security card) Since I was born in Buenos Aires and left for California when I was seven years old, I have dual nationalities. Thanks to my girlfriend’s help with Spanish translation and Buenos Aires maps every time we went there, it was now finally ready to be picked up on my forth trip.

My friends that picked me up were helping me in my final leg of getting my DNI . You have to know in Argentina that is easier said than done. The first office that they drove me to said we had to go to another office. We went to the other office and they said to go upstairs. We went upstairs and they told us to go downstairs. We went downstairs and the clerk said they did not have my DNI. We said “Yes you do.” He asked where did you apply for this. We said here. He said “Oh”, and then he looked for my DNI and found it! So, I finally have it and everyone says what are you are going to do with it. I don’t know, when I figure it out, I’ll let you know. Chow.

Oh, by the way, I’m having breakfast, lunch at Lo De Mateo at austria y juan maria gutierrez

Travel

La Boca Area Buenos Aires

February 6, 2008 jd

La Boca, meaning in Spanish, the mouth, is the area of Buenos Aires that Italians migrating to Buenos Aires in the 19th and 20th century settled into. The area was named La Boca because of the natural shape of the harbor formed by the River Rio Riachuelo bending and flowing into the Rio de la Plata creating what appears to be a mouth.

The area is difficult to get to using the Subte, so John and I bought a guide to the collective; the huge city bus system that criss-crosses the city. (Getting there was easy, getting back a little more difficult as we were standing on the wrong street for the return buses to our area. But here are almost no bus signs (let alone street signs), you just have to go stand where other people are standing; if they look like they are waiting for a bus!!)

The vendors have painted the area to recreate the early days of the area.

The first thing you see is the huge stadium for the Boca Juniors. And the people in the area have a fervent; most would say fanatical; identification with the team. Soccer memorabilia and T-shirts are everywhere.

Anyway, the first Italian and French immigrants built boarding houses haphazardly with metal sheeting called “conventillos”. These were decorated with whatever paint was left over on the docks, creating a mish-mash of colors on each building. The colors can be inviting, but the poorly insulated buildings can be unbearably hot in the summer and frigid in the winter. It was fine the day we were there, even though it is summer here, maybe mid-80â€™s.

On of many beautiful doors in Buenos Aires

On a Saturday (when we went) it is very busy and touristy. We saw a lot of interesting things, and spent a couple of hours in an on street cafe, enjoying the dancing and singing of a local tango troupe. Lots of little stores, artists, and street vendors we did a good bit of shopping there.

Colorful vendor area